All musical instruments are an extension of the human voice. Even the best keyboard, string, and percussion players know how to create musical lines that breathe. While wind and brass players are keenly aware of how to use air to inflect a myriad of emotions, there is not a lot of music that requires them to incorporate their voices with their instruments. On their new recording, titled SaxoVoce, (to be released on September 7) the inventive saxophone duo Ogni Suono — Noa Even and Phil Pierick — take on the challenge of playing and vocalizing during seven eclectic works. [Read more…]

Conversations between two like-minded people over coffee can often inspire great ideas. Such was the case a year and a half ago when saxophonist Noa Even and cellist Sophie Benn got together to discuss ways to promote new music in Cleveland. The result of that meeting was a new addition to the area’s music scene — the Cleveland Uncommon Sound Project.

On Thursday, January 18 at the Bop Stop, CUSP will host “Toasty Tunes,” a winter fundraiser to support the organization’s Re:Sound New Music Festival, to be held from June 7-10 of this year. The doors will open at 7:00 pm for a meet-and-greet with the evening’s performers and the CUSP team. Performances by saxophone duo Ogni Suono (Noa Even and Phil Pierick) and saxophonist/composer Nick Zoulek will begin at 7:30 pm. Attendees can learn more about CUSP and Re:Sound during a conversation with the founders moderated by me, Mike Telin. Click here for tickets and event information. The evening will conclude with a late-night improv jam session at 10:00 pm. Bring your own instruments and join in — that session is free but donations will be appreciated.

Noa Even said during a recent telephone conversation that the timing of that meeting over coffee was fortuitous. [Read more…]

When saxophonists Noa Even and Phil Pierick formed Ogni Suono in 2009, they were faced with a dilemma. “There’s not a lot of repertoire for saxophone duo,” Noa Even said during a recent telephone conversation.

They recognized the only way to solve that problem was to commission new works. The Duo’s debut album, Invisible Seams, features some of their early collaborations with composers. Then, with support from New Music USA, Even and Pierick launched SaxoVoce, a long-term commissioning project exploring the musical, dramatic, and theatrical possibilities inherent in the synthesis of saxophone and voice.

On Sunday, February 5 at 7:30 pm at Historic St. John’s in Ohio City, the Syndicate for The New Arts will present Ogni Suono in a concert featuring works written for their SaxoVoce project. [Read more…]

Re•Views

“I am sitting in a room,” intones the composer Alvin Lucier, announcing the title of the composition he is recording before clarifying: “…different from the one you are sitting in now.” As stay-at-home orders arose in March 2020, music-lovers on social media noted that Lucier’s half century-old audio piece could serve as an unlikely quarantine anthem.

Enter the soprano Stephanie Lamprea, last heard in Cleveland during the 2019 Re:Sound Festival, making some of the lockdown era’s most vivid new music through an approach that inverts everything that defines Lucier’s piece — except, of course, for the isolation.

A new CD by Christa Rakich, who is currently Visiting Professor of Organ at the Oberlin Conservatory, gives a nod in two directions. As its title announces, it’s an homage to her former teacher and colleague, the late Yuko Hayashi, longtime professor at the New England Conservatory and curator of Boston’s Old West Church Organ Series. It’s also the first recording to be made of Richards, Fowkes & Co.’s Opus 16 instrument, built in 2008 for Goodson Chapel of the Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. [Read on…]

On their recent, self-titled debut album, the Cleveland-based duo Patchwork — Noa Even and Stephen Klunk — present five commissioned works that draw on free jazz, metal, progressive rock, and the avant-garde. Released on New Focus Records, the album takes you to a sonic world never dreamed possible from a saxophone and drum set duo. As we have come to expect from Even and Klunk, the five works are an exploration of extended techniques. More importantly, their performances are bewitching — ensemble playing at its best.

Hailed by the New York Times as “The Best Classical Music Ensemble of 2018,” Wet Ink Ensemble has lived up to this acclaim once again with their recent release Glossolalia/Lines on Black. The album takes its name from the two extended works by Wet Ink members Alex Mincek (saxophone) and Sam Pluta (electronics). The remainder of the septet includes Eric Wubbels (piano), Erin Lesser (flutes), Ian Antonio (percussion), Josh Modney (violin), and Kate Soper (voice). [Read on…]

Croatian-born pianist Martina Filjak, now living in Berlin, has released her latest album, Light and Darkness, featuring music by Franz Liszt — plus an epilogue by Arvo Pärt. The disc confirms once again all the special technical and interpretive qualities that won her the gold medal at the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2009. [Read on…]